1833 Memoir First Race of Ancestry RUSSELL WIFFEN 1st

A bright first edition of the Historical Memoirs of the First Race of Ancestry of the House of Russell, by J. H. Wiffen.

Bound in cloth.

Scarce - no copies available at time of writing.

First Edition.

This work on the lineage of the House of Russell is a companion to Wiffen's Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell.

Jeremiah Holmes Wiffen, 1792 – 1836, was a British poet and translator. In 1807 Wiffen was apprenticed to Isaac Payne, a schoolmaster, and in the same year his first published poem. In 1811 he returned his birthplace, Woburn, and opened a school in Leighton Road. Studying mostly at night, a lifelong habit, he taught himself Hebrew, French, and Italian, and later Spanish and Welsh. In the summer of 1821 Wiffen was appointed secretary and librarian to the duke of Bedford at Woburn Abbey. He translated many works, including The Works of Garcilasso de la Vega. Wiffen was a lifelong Quaker and was known as a Liberal reformer. His family seems never to have known poverty, and his post at Woburn brought him not only financial security, but contacts with many of the leading political and artistic figures of the time. Wiffen declined an LLD from Aberdeen University in 1827. He contributed poems to magazines and ‘albums’, and published occasional poetry, often associated with Woburn, throughout his life.

Wiffen took eight years to compile his Historical Memoirs of the House of Russell (1833), for which he made extensive researches including a four-month tour in Normandy.

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